Monday, September 22, 2008

Can't believe it's been nearly 3 weeks since my last post. Time flies. Going to have to be careful about how I spend my time or I'm not going to make the January 09 deadline.

I have been moving around the web a lot more since I started this, and boy, the face of the web has changed! When you talk about Internet marketing in the old days, it's just submitting your site to the search engines, exchanging links, and getting listed in the directories. Now, it's more about the social networks, or Web 2.0. If anything, these networks have actually made Internet marketing simpler.

I just joined HubPages a few weeks back. It's a online publishing site on which you can write about anything you like, except for the obvious no-nos like porn, racist discrimination, etc. It has a rating system which rewards originality.

What I like about HubPages is that you can get traffic from within the network itself. This is essentially a characteristic of most if not all social networks, which is why I said that getting traffic is actually much easier now.

Here are some of the ways you can get traffic from HubPages:

When you publish a site (it's called a hub), your site will appear in a section listing the latest hubs published, so you will get some traffic in the first few hours.

Comment on other publisher's hubs. Your id will be attached to your comment, so you can attract some traffic to your profile and your hubs.

Become a fan of other publishers (hubbers). You can attract their attention and you get to know when they publish a new hub. If you are fast, you can be the first to leave a comment. ;) They might become your fan as well and will be informed whenever you publish a new hub.

HubPages has a system which rewards originality. An original article has a higher rating, and has a greater chance of being listed under the Hot Hubs and Best Hubs category.

HubPages also has a Best Hubbers category. Consistently publish great hubs and you can get into this category. More great traffic for you!

In the old model, Internet marketing is all about search engine optimization and getting your links onto other sites. While this has not changed in the new model, getting your links onto other sites has gotten very much easier. The focus has shifted to user generated content, and building relationships.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Just signed up for Twitter a few hours ago to explore the possibilities. For those who doesn't know what it is, it is a service in which you type in what you are doing at any given time in 140 characters or less. This message will go to your friends, that is, whoever is "following" you. You can also "follow" other people, in which you get their messages. Actually, in a nutshell, that's it.

But for marketing and networking, there are definitely possibilities. You can view who I'm following, and who the people I'm following are following, and so on. Since each person will typically follow 50-100 people, you can access thousands just from the people I'm following and who they are following.

When you are viewing a person's profile (I don't know the proper term), you are also viewing the person's "tweets", or messages. That way, you know a little about each person, about who they are and what they are involved in. If they appear "relevant", by all means add them to your follow list. And if they are on your list, there is a chance that they will add you to their list as well. I mean, I just signed up and I already have 2 people following me and one of them subscribed to my mailing list. :)

I can think of more possibilities but I'm not going into that now. Take a look at what I'm doing now here:

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

I am really amazed at the amount of misleading and hyped up information there is out there on Internet marketing and home based businesses. We are at the point at which a total newbie, who is just embarking on his journey, does not know where to turn.

On the one hand, you have an Internet marketing guru telling you that link exchanges are great are traffic, and then you have another telling you that you must do SEO or you are not going to get any traffic, and another saying that link exchanges and SEO are passe, social networks are the in thing now.

And every Internet marketing guru has a product to sell! And you know what? Seems that everybody is a marketing guru. If you have the testimonials, the scanned copy of your bank statement, and a product to sell, you are an Internet marketing guru.

Sorry, enough venting.

The point I'm trying to make is that you don't know where to go for good, honest, reliable, down to earth information.

Since I already have a site at http://QuittingYourJob.com about home based businesses and Internet marketing, and its approach is to offer honest and down to earth information, I can start there.

I will revamp and expand the site, concentrating on increasing the number of brandable ebooks available, introducing more relevant articles and updating the marketing section with more up to date information.

For now, revenue source will primarily be Adsense. I will look into other sources in the coming weeks.